"One of the most untruthful things possible, you know, is a collection of facts, because they can be made to appear so many different ways"
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A pile of facts can feel like bedrock, but Menninger is pointing out how easily it turns into stagecraft. The provocation in calling a “collection of facts” one of the most untruthful things is deliberate: he’s not attacking reality, he’s attacking the illusion that raw data speaks for itself. Facts don’t arrive with their own moral, and the human mind is an expert at supplying one.
As a psychiatrist writing in an era newly fascinated by scientific authority and clinical classification, Menninger understood that observation is never neutral. What gets counted, what gets ignored, what gets labeled “symptom” versus “personality,” already builds an argument before any conclusion is drawn. A case history can be “just the facts” and still function like a story: the sequence, emphasis, and framing quietly tell you what to think. In that sense, facts become props, not proof.
The subtext is a warning aimed less at liars than at the respectable: experts, institutions, courts, newspapers, even therapists. “You know” is doing social work here, a conspiratorial nudge that invites the reader to admit what we all practice daily: confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, selective memory. Menninger’s line also anticipates a modern media problem. In politics and culture wars, people don’t usually dispute the existence of facts; they curate them into narratives that flatter their side and punish the other. Truth, he implies, is not the same as accuracy. It’s accuracy plus honest interpretation, and interpretation is where we most like to cheat.
As a psychiatrist writing in an era newly fascinated by scientific authority and clinical classification, Menninger understood that observation is never neutral. What gets counted, what gets ignored, what gets labeled “symptom” versus “personality,” already builds an argument before any conclusion is drawn. A case history can be “just the facts” and still function like a story: the sequence, emphasis, and framing quietly tell you what to think. In that sense, facts become props, not proof.
The subtext is a warning aimed less at liars than at the respectable: experts, institutions, courts, newspapers, even therapists. “You know” is doing social work here, a conspiratorial nudge that invites the reader to admit what we all practice daily: confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, selective memory. Menninger’s line also anticipates a modern media problem. In politics and culture wars, people don’t usually dispute the existence of facts; they curate them into narratives that flatter their side and punish the other. Truth, he implies, is not the same as accuracy. It’s accuracy plus honest interpretation, and interpretation is where we most like to cheat.
Quote Details
| Topic | Truth |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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